Posts by sisk

Tennessee bloke quits job over satanic wage slip

Funny thing is....

Biblically, 666 is also the number of man.

Kickstarter project says open source can blast Death Star costs

Re: Danger ahead, everybody peeps - we need to fund this by stealth

that the people are indeed aggresive little mammals determined to "do unto others", simply because we can.

Um....have a look at our history. We're not exactly the most peace loving species and we do tend to lash out at anything that's different if we think we can get away with it. If any kind of galactic civilization does exist they'd probably be right to be worried about us having a fracking big space gun.

Re: not to mention...

Did anyone check if the satellite NK launched was a mini deathstar?

It was, but they didn't cover the exhaust vent.

Re: Sirius - The Disclosure Project

why can't someone who works at Microsoft in the volume licensing department spell - of all things - administrator?

How well do you spell big words that aren't in your native language. Or, since Hindi uses a different alphabet, even in the same alphabet?

Wait....so 117 people have pledged an average of just over £120 each to this joke? Is the lunacy contagious?

US military advisor calls for McKinnon pardon, recruitment of "master hackers"

I'm suddenly reminded of an episode of CSI where a dude breaks into the FBI database in an effort to get a job then gets hired by the NSA instead of going to jail. Are we going ta ask the 'master hackers' to write a GUI in Visual Basic to trace an IP to?

Re: Pardon me

A pardon 'forgives' (for lack of a better term) him of any crimes he may or may not have committed. Under US law no conviction is necessary for a pardon. You can stop prosecution cold with one before the trial even starts.

Study: Gay marriage support linked to pr0n consumption

Re: re: Mechanism please.

What about open minded, liberal Christians? (Yes, they do exist. They're just a relatively quiet bunch.)

Re: Lies, Damn lies, and... well ,you know the rest...

Frankly all intelligent people need to get laid more. Here's to fending off the future predicted in Idiocracy.

US diplomat: If EU allows 'right to be forgotten' ... it might spark TRADE WAR

Dear US Government

Kindly either remember who you're SUPPOSED to work for or just change the name to the Incorporated States of America and stop pretending to still be doing what you're supposed to. That way maybe we can wake up enough sheeple to get all your corrupt asses voted out of office and replaced with people who are not so easily bought.

Icon is my first reaction to the headline, repeated a couple times as I read the article.

GNOME project picks JavaScript as sole app dev language

WTF Gnome?

JavaScript as a primary dev language? Has the Gnome team lost their freaking minds? Or did I just wake up in the Twilight Zone* this morning.

*No, not the one with sparkly vampires. The other one.

BANG and the server's gone: Man gets 8 months for destroying work computers

32k in damages and he gets a 1k fine and less than a year in jail? In the unlikely event that I ever I find myself in trouble with the law I want that judge.

Introducing the Open Source Rookie of the Year... Whoa, it's Microsoft

It wasn't open source they took issue with, it was the GPL.

To be fair GPL was, at the time, the dominant OSS license in use. It has never been the only one, of course, but there was a time when it was as dominant in OSS as Windows was in OSes.

Android gets tipsy on Wine, runs WINDOWS apps

Let's be honest: Wine is far from a perfect solution even in it's native environment of a POSIX based system. The challenges the Wine team faces are pretty significant. Frankly I'm impressed if it can get Windows apps to run on even x86 Android. If they get this to work on ARM Android then it's a amazing feat even if the apps do run dog slow.

Re: running on a Mac which was itself running an Android emulator

It has the metro interface, the driver support of x64 linux and the pricetag of a Mac.

And right there you have the makings of the perfect horror movie to scare the crap out of nerds.

Re: Do be quiet!

Indeed. If MS had a legal leg to stand on for stopping Wine it would have happened 10 years ago when they were so gung ho about stopping Linux that they launched their extremely inappropriately named 'Get the Facts' campaign (which, as I recall, contained very little in the way of actual facts and truckloads of dishonest FUD).

We're not making this up: Apple trademarks the SHOP

Re: Anybody read the application?

then why do the competition bother copying it?

Erm.....this layout for stores was around LONG before Apple. The first computer shop I even walked into, when I was about waist high to my dad back in the early 80s, used a layout not much different than what's being described here.

I get why they applied for the trademark (they ARE Apple after all) but I can't for the life of me figure out what kind of deficiency allowed it to be granted. Was I a bribe, blackmail, or fanboism? Surely it's one of the three because this is the layout of a massive number of stores. It's hardly something Apple could claim is uniquely theirs.

YouTube's hilarious cat videos could soon cost you $5 a month

Re: Tin Foil Hats

HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT EL REG COMMENTARDS WOULD ENGAGE IN FLAME WARS!

Oh....wait......never mind.

Re: This explains ...

I thought 'on strike' was just the natural feline resting state.

Could work, but it's doubtful

There is some stuff of YouTube that would be worth paying a small subscription fee. Mostly, though, these are people who are already making decent money though (Mystery Guitar Man comes to mind), so why would they want to start charging and lose a ton of viewers?

As for cat videos, yeah they're cute but there's no way in hell I'd pay to watch them.

Oh, Sony, you big tease: Mystery PlayStation reveal date set

In thirty years nothing built by Sony this decade is going to be working anymore anyway, so you don't have anything to worry about. This ain't the Sony we grew up with. This one make high-priced cheap crap built to last until the warranty period is up instead of the high quality get-what-you-pay-for stuff they made back in the 80s and 90s that still runs today.

I watched Excel meet 1-2-3, and beat it fair and square

Re: 3-2-1.... Eadon.

You obviously haven't encountered people using Word tables in multiple documents as a relational database.

Geh, you're gonna bring back my nightmares. I was given one of those things that clocked in at 800 pages a few years back and told to 'fix' it. Yeah, they really do exist and yes they're every bit as bad as you'd expect them to be.

For the record, my fix ended up being a script that read the word docs into a proper database (MSSQL to be exact).

How to destroy a brand-new Samsung laptop: Boot Linux on it

Re: Well actually

every year I start with a version of Linux (last was Ubuntu) to see how it fares. Never ever has a Linux install !just worked!.

Next time try Mint or Mepis. Ubuntu's always been a steaming pile of crap despite all the press it gets. I've never seen it just work on anything, and on most of the machines that I've tried it on even Debian took less effort to get up. Mint and Mepis, on the other hand, have never let me down when 'just works' is the goal (though I do still prefer Debian).

Re: @Ru re. Oh How I Laughed...

I thought that 'bricked' meant that your shiny item of kit had assumed the functionality of a brick, but that it was recoverable if you knew how to do the necessary digital incantations.

You're half right. 'Bricked' does imply the functionality of a brick, but it's not always possible to recover from such a state. There are device that when bricked stay that way and there's no way to fix them short of replacing parts. Even with devices that can normally be unbricked it's sometimes possible to brick them so badly that the unbricking techniques won't work.

Naked intruder cracks one off in Florida rampage drama

Re: "a little more careful murdering people under the Stand Your Ground law "

I would suggest a Federal law setting a minimum training requirement.

Constitutionally speaking the Federal government has no authority to make such a law, just as they have no authority to dictate requirements for a driver's license. Realistically speaking most gun owners are well versed in gun safety even without any laws requiring it. Not all, certainly, but then not all (or, I would say, even most) licensed drivers can safely handle a car either. I would guess that there are proportionally more gun owners who handle their weapons safely than drivers who handle their cars safely. Statistics would certainly back that up, given how many more fatal car accidents there are each year than accidental shootings.

Re: Americans use such self-explanetory language ... once you learn the vocabulary

There are three possibilities as to why Mrs. Land missed (with the gun she no doubt retrieved from the gun safe since few people carry guns in their own homes). Possibility number one is that she wasn't even trying to hurt the guy but was only trying to get his attention. Since the most common .38 in the US is a six shot revolver I find this likely. Had she missed she would have emptied the gun trying to hit him.

Possibility number two is that it was Mr. Lands gun and she only knew the basics of how to shoot it. Contrary to popular belief guns are hard to use, especially when there's something alive on the other end.

Which brings us to possibility number 3: that she knew how to use the gun and was trying to hit the intruder, but subconsciously couldn't make herself shoot a human being. "Gun owner" does not mean "psychopath".

As for the stand your ground laws, they do not allow murder. They allow for self defense, nothing else. The Trevon case was a pretty clear case of someone trying to claim self defense when they were likely the aggressor.

Also, despite what you seem to think, not everyone who owns a gun is eager to use it on another human being. I have a 12 gauge myself for exactly this sort of situation. I chose that gun specifically because the sound of a shotgun being pumped is very distinctive and sometimes enough to scare off an intruder without a shot being fired.

Star Trek saviour JJ Abrams joins the dark side: Star Wars VII

Re: Ughhh

..."and transporting to a ship at warp, come on."

Actually there were a couple of pre-existing examples of that in canon. Granted they had barely worked out how to do it by the Next Gen era and even then they only attempted it in the most desperate situations. Spock-the-asshole did rank pretty high on my WTF meter, but Spock and Uhura as a couple pinned the meter out.

Dead Steve Jobs tried to KILL Ashton Kutcher from beyond the grave

This is NOT method acting!

Speaking as someone who has a degree in acting* this is not how you do method acting. You don't get into a murderer's head by killing someone, you don't get into an insomniac's head by staying up for days at a time, and you don't get into Steve Jobs' head by following his questionable diet.

Seriously, someone hand these Hollywood types one of Stanislovsky's books before any more of them end up killing themselves trying to use method acting without knowing what it is.

*Yes, I really majored in acting my first go around in college, no I don't know why, no I never did anything with it, no I have no idea how I went from that to programming, and yes I'd like to go back in time and smack some sense into my 18 year old self.

Don't like your cell network? Legal unlocking ends TONIGHT in US

I have no words to express my feelings on this decision. Instead, allow me to indulge in a fitting, if slightly juvenile, visual demonstration for the Library of Congress' decision.

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........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\

........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')

.........\.................'...../

..........''...\.......... _.·´

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'Op! Op! Op!' Gangnam Style earns Google $8m

Re: i wonder

I'm not embarrassed to state that I rather like it

I liked it the first dozen or so times I heard it. The next 20 or 30 time I was getting tired of it. The last hundred or so times I've heard it I've wanted to throw the speakers out the window.

Chinese boffins crack cloaking tech for camouflage

Good grief

How do you people take a story about an invisibility cloak, or near invisibility cloak as the case may be, and turn it into an opportunity to take a poke at religion?

Honestly, what difference does it make to you if someone else believes in God or invisible pink unicorns or flying spaghetti monsters or honest politicians?

Asteroid-mining 'FireFlys' will be ready for action by 2015, vows space firm

How to profit

Step 1) Mine asteroids.

Step 2) Use raw materials to build structures in space

Step 3) Sell seats on those obit built space ships.

Step 4) If that doesn't work, have your robotic workers (programmed to be completely loyal to you, of course) to build an array of fracking big space guns pointed at all the world's major cities and hold the world for ransom for one trillion dollars. It is essential to raise your pinky finger to your lips and laugh maniacally after making your demand. It helps if you have a bald cat to.

Win8 Hate in context

Personally my reaction to Win95 was 'Meh, whatever'. I do agree with your assessment of File Manager vs Explorer though. To this day I still don't use Explorer as a file manager if I can avoid it.

Game over for Atari? One life left as biz files for bankruptcy protection

Bushnell?

Bushnell leaving Atari had nothing to do with the crash of the home games market. It was the fact that there were relatively few gem games to be found in the mountain of crap third parties were putting out for game systems (all of the ones that were around at the time, not just Atari) in the late 70s. For every good game like Space Invaders or Pacman there were a dozen terrible ones like ET and Custer's Revenge. People quit buying games because most of the games were garbage. There'd be no home gaming market today had Nintendo not come along with the idea of using licensing to impose some sort of quality control on third party developers.

Engineers are cold and dead inside, research shows

Like I care what someone in Sweeden thinks of me.

Or anyone else for that matter, apparently.

Google files patent for eyewear that SHOOTS LASERS

the hardware could be a mugging magnet.

Doubtful. The potential mugger would have to know what they were for them to be attracted by them. Given that most (not all, admittedly) low rent criminals like muggers tend to be on the lower end of the intelligence scale I would find it unlikely that many of them pay enough attention to technology to identify them or know what they cost.

Climate watch: 2012 figures confirm global warming still stalled

Re: Trust the satellite data

@AC 17:38 - I note a few interesting things on that graph. I really wish I had more data to put it into perspective though. Taken on its own the graph holds little meaning. Yes, the world's hotter than it was 20 years ago, but we all know that already. The question that needs answered is not 'is it true' but 'why'.

Re: I reckon it's all linked to nuclear fusion

We'd be months away from the first feasible working fusion power plant today had Bussard gotten the funding he needed instead of all the money being shunted into the war in Iraq. He knew how to do it, had the data to back it up, and couldn't get any funding because waging a war on the other side of the planet was more important.

Re: One of these is false

Is it even possible to find a rational voice amidst the doom mongers and the "la-la-la fingers in the ears" bunch ?

Possible, yes, but how would you pick out the rational voice with real, unbiased research from the mountain of quotes from studies crafted to meet one predetermined finding or the other?

Empire says ‘primitive’ Earth not ready for Death Star

Re: The REAL reason to be worried about this...

Americans seem to actually BELIEVE films.

That's because the intelligence of an American is inversely proportional to the volume and frequency with which he or she spouts his or her beliefs. In other words smart Americans quietly enjoy the movie and then goes home to have dinner with the family and stupid ones come out of the theater yelling to everyone who'll listen about how X new technology depicted in the movie is really cool and going to be deployed to our troops next week.

Honestly, given how American humor works I'm guessing that most of the people who signed that petition were at least smiling in amusement as they did so. Some were probably outright chuckling.

Step forward Newt Gingrich

I know you're joking, but still that's a frightening proposition. Newt might actually try to do it, and I'm not at all certain that there's enough common sense in Congress to tell him no.

IBM brains ponder universe, say kids will go nuts for STEAMPUNK

I hope they're right

Steampunk fashion would be a massive improvement over what passes for fashion right now. Maybe it's just me, but there's a certain classiness to steampunk that really appeals to me. That's probably just a reflection of the fact that people in the Victorian era wanted to look good while a lot of today's trendsetters just want to be the center of attention.

Smooth criminals spared the clink for hacking Sony's Jacko archive

Re: Smooth Criminals

Still an amazingly low sentence.

I disagree. For once the punishment for copyright infringement fits the crime.

Better to give these guys community service and save the jail space and taxpayer dollars for real criminals. Like politicians.

Scientists spin carbon nanotube threads on industrial scale

Re: Woohoo!

@Denarius - Those are probably minor problems compared to the problem of a material strong enough to build a space elevator in the first place. Maybe they can harvest all that energy to power the thing or something.

I do have to admit though I just had a frightening mental image of what would happen if the tether for a space elevator got hit with a bolt of lightning powerful enough to vaporize a few millimeters of it.

Now Microsoft 'actively investigates' Surface slab jailbreak tool

Re: Doing this protects the developers

And the people who want to do it will do it. You can't stop jailbreaking. You can slow it down for a month or two, but in the end the people who want to do it will always find a way, so why waste time and money fighting it? Fighting jailbreaking is just like adding DRM: utterly pointless. They're fighting a battle that simply can't be won.

Forget the conspiracy theories. How about a little common sense. If you dump a wad of money into closing the hole used to jailbreak your device only to have another one being exploited next week what have you accomplished? You've wasted money and probably raised your prices to compensate for it and annoyed a not-insignificant portion of the market.

Appropriate action?

Appropriate action would be realizing that people with the desire and know how to jailbreak their devices will do it and not standing in their way. That's a fight that can't be won (or, at any rate, hasn't yet been won by any manufacturer). Better to reap the consumer goodwill that comes from applauding the minds that can do it than to play the expensive whack-a-mole game of trying to prevent jailbreaks.

Alas, it seems that less enlightened minds have overruled the smart people in Redmond who understand this rather simple concept.

Anger grows over the death of Aaron Swartz

Re: Comparing Turing to Swartz? Complete FAIL!

Still, suicide is an incredibly selfish act that leaves a lot of family and friends utterly bereft.

Suicide is a symptom of the disease that is severe depression. Many suicidal people honestly believe that their family and friends will be better off without them and so think that they are doing the world a favor by offing themselves. There's nothing selfish about that mindset. It's merely misguided.

And yes, I'm well aware that there are many people who don't consider depression a disease. Having been far too up close to the end result of the refusal to think of depression as a disease for comfort I have to disagree with those people.

Manning was 'illegally punished', will get 112 days lopped off any sentence

Re: The army don't shoot people for capital offences ...

@asdf - That is a completely dishonest misrepresentation of stand your ground laws. All stand your ground laws do is allow you to defend yourself with lethal force. Most states that have them require that you have a legitimate reason to fear for your life before you resort to lethal force, and even then you can usually expect to spend some time in jail while the police sort out exactly what happened except in the most obvious cases. It's a far cry from a license to shoot whoever you feel like shooting.

If you want strict gun control then you're welcome to your opinion, but please leave the fear mongering at the door. We're getting way too much of that from the media right now as is.

Drop that can of sweet pop and grab a coffee - for your sanity's sake

Re: HFCS popular in US because it's massively subsidised

HFCS is popular because we've been given little choice for most of the last 30 years or so. Real sugar sodas are making a comeback here though. PepsiCo calls theirs 'throwback' because real sugar soda hasn't been available in the US since the 80s. It tastes MUCH better than anything made with HFCS.